What is the history and status of beekeeping in China?

From the primitive society to the fishing and hunting society, the ancestors of the Chinese nation, while collecting natural plants and hunting animals, hunted honey and bee seeds from beehives in tree holes and rock caves.

Initially, they destroyed the hives and plundered the honey and bee seeds. Later, consciously utilizing the regenerative ability of the bee colony, they learned to smoke away the bees, retaining some of the hives for honey, wax and bee seeds. Later people learned to paint the mouth of the hive with soil, cow dung, etc., and leave the hive door open for the bees to enter and exit. Later on, marks were carved on tree trunks to indicate the ownership of the hive. After thousands of years of evolution, Chinese bees gradually switched from taking honey from wild hives to domesticating and rearing them at home, which marked the beginning of beekeeping in ancient China and laid the foundation for the development of beekeeping science in China and the traditional rearing methods of Chinese bees. With the introduction of western culture and new technology in modern times, it led to the experimentation and popularization of new technology of Chinese beekeeping. At the beginning of this century, China actively introduced western bees and founded specialized apiaries, which led to the development of scientific research, teaching and community organizations in the bee industry. Especially after the founding of New China, the Party and the government attached great importance to the development of beekeeping, and China's beekeeping industry entered a period of high-speed and comprehensive development, and became a large beekeeping country that attracted world attention. By 1988, the number of bee colonies kept in China had reached 7.69 million colonies, the highest in the history of the country. The annual production of honey reached more than 200,000 tons, and the annual production of royal jelly reached more than 1,000 tons.

This article is derived from: "Practical Medicinal Animal Breeding Technology" by China Agricultural Publishing House